12/21/06

Elder Babs,

What’s the word Choch? Sorry again for the lack of letter in your e-mail. I fixed my internet Monday night, but it was down all weekend to send off an e-mail. I know we’ll just be talking on Monday, but what the heck? I might as well try to get a letter off to you. I think it can get there by Friday. Here’s to hoping. If I send it off by lunch today it should anyway. But who knows with all of the Christmas mail going around. Friday will be the busiest day of the week with Christmas presents, cards, and letters all going out. What to do? I have been super sick all week. I had this cold for like 2 weeks, then as I had it beat, I got the flu and my immune system went down the toilet with my puke and squirts. So my cold came back with a vengeance and it blossomed into a raging sinus infection and I’ve been way warn down. Suzanne and Brinlee have both been sick with the same thing so we finally went to the Doctor yesterday to get on some heavy duty anti-biotics. Hopefully we will be free and clear before this little baby comes to a family of sickies. Can you believe how soon we will be having this baby? A Day after we talk to you if not sooner. I’ll be interested to see if Grandma pulls her strings on Christmas since we’d be celebrating her birthday on June 25^th so as not to take anything away from her birthday or from Christmas. So being celebrated on Grandma’s birthday, I can see her expediting the process if at all possible. I still need to get out and get Suzanne’s gift(s). I only have one gift responsibility every year and that is Suzanne’s and I always put it off till the last minute. She bought everyone else in the family’s gifts a while ago. I’m a slacker. Speaking of gifts, I sent yours in Mom’s and Dad’s package but it wasn’t wrapped, there was no explanation, nothing. So I don’t know if they did anything with it or just tossed it in and that was that. So sorry for the lack of intrigue and surprise there. I was rushed to get it over there because they were sending it that day and I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to with it. I hope you like it. We can discuss it when you call in case you waited till Christmas morning to open the box as you should! I’m throwing in a little sum’m sum’m with this letter too so that you can get what you need and keep it light. I know that getting actual gifts from peeps back home were a bit bulky and would usually just get sent back home anyway, so you can go get a tie or socks, or go towards a re-sole or something that you need. Sorry for the lack of actual gift stuff, but I know you are into other things and the material commercialism that makes up 90% of the country’s idea of Christmas is a bit bothersome to a missionary. Christmas is such a great time to be on a mission. Man, I loved that time of year in NYC. Sure there was a lot of hustle and bustle on 5^th Ave. at all the premium stores and what not to get shopping done. But there was also a ton of activity in all of the churches around, mostly black churches that got rowdy every other Sunday, but as they got closer to Christmas, they settled it down, reflected on the birth of Jesus, put nativity scenes around, and people’s hearts turned to thinking about the true meaning of Christmas more than every. It was easy to build on common beliefs around Christmas time. We are doing a sub for santa at work right now for one of our employee’s who’s 13 year old son was mowed down in a hit and run a couple of weeks ago and is still in bad shape at Primary Children’s Hospital. His daughter just younger than this kid had her birthday that day he got hit. So they still haven’t celebrated that either and this Christmas is going to be spent at the hospital without many gifts or reason to celebrate much. The bills are through the roof, they still haven’t caught the driver and life has been gloomy for him lately. So we organized a sub for santa that will more than adequately help out his family this year. So that’s been fun to help with that. Oh, my work party was awesome. It went off without a hitch. Well, one hitch, but the rest of it was smooth as silk. We had great food and more than everyone could handle at Rodizio Grill. I had my Brazilian mix going on Dark Angel for all 2 hours. I MC’d the crap out of that party too. Everyone had fun with the prize drawing. We gave out so much swag that more than half of all our employees walked away with at least 10 bucks worth of gas card or 15 bones at Best Boy. The rest of the gifts all got more valuable from there. So we broke the bank on prizes for 130 peeps. I had nothing but great compliments from everyone. The one hitch was while I was up front calling people down as I drew their name, I was told to ask the head pressman that was up front to get his prize if he had a sash. I didn’t know what that meant and was frankly nervous to ask it, but because it was coming from Kent, our Operations manager, I asked it and got a big Birdy flipped at me in front of everyone. Yeah, that’s not cool. I must have looked shocked, but I said, “well, I guess it’s a good thing we are off site, huh?” after the party, he came up to me and apologized and said, hey, that wasn’t meant for you, that was meant for whoever put you up to asking that. I guess he takes Tae Kwon doe where instead of karate belts, they wear sashes. He thought that was a little bit gay and made mention of it to Kent and didn’t like Kent bringing that up in front of everyone. Well, I accepted the apology but told him we’d be having a chat about that later. He looked at me to see if I was kidding and saw that I was as serious as a heart attack. So he sweated it out over the weekend and yesterday I had his boss have a 15 minute discourse on how inappropriate that was at a work function and that he made a fool of himself and set a standard that that kind of thing was OK when it’s not. We asked him if we should make an example of him and fire him now so that other employees would know that it wasn’t OK to put up that gesture. We asked him what he would do in our situation to let other employees know that what he did wasn’t OK. We gave him more than enough awkward silence to think his answer over carefully. He didn’t have an answer because he would have condemned himself. We let him off the hook finally, but he had to go wipe because we dropped the hammer pretty hard. Last week I went and had lunch with Staci and Ajax at Granatos by my work. That was fun. Ajax is getting big and cuter. He is still so stone faced all the time that it’s a challenge to get him to laugh. But a welcome challenge I’ll take every time. Staci hadn’t seen my offices before and felt left out since you and Shelby had been here before. So it was fun spending an afternoon with her. It snowed a ton this weekend and made the commute suck. I was actually so sick that when my home teacher called, he said I sounded like crap and asked if I had shoveled my walks yet. I told him no, but didn’t want him to come do that. It was too late, he had called me from his cell phone and was already enroute to my house. So he shoveled my drive way and walks. That’s a lot of work. I felt bad. But I had to let him do it and allow him to receive his blessings for serving us. It was nice of him.

Here are the football standings with two weeks to go…

Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Jake's G-Men	13	2	0	0.867	0	W11	3	1675.5	0.0	1338.5
Ghetto Fabulous	12	3	0	0.800	1	W4	2	1524.5	151.0	1343.5
The Bradiators	10	5	0	0.667	3	W2	4	1578.0	97.5	1433.5
Baybaz Ballaz	8	7	0	0.533	5	L2	3	1426.5	249.0	1465.5
Uonlywish Choppers	7	8	0	0.467	6	W1	0	1320.5	355.0	1526.0
Silent Assassins	6	9	0	0.400	7	L1	1	1479.0	196.5	1471.5
Ice Cold	6	9	0	0.400	7	L4	0	1371.0	304.5	1399.5
Hip Waders	6	9	0	0.400	7	L5	1	1325.5	350.0	1343.0
Money in the bank	4	11	0	0.267	9	W1	1	1371.5	304.0	1519.5
Buffalo Wings	3	12	0	0.200	10	L1	0	1196.0	479.5	1427.5

I can still be overtaken by Bradiators if I lose both of my last two games and he wins them both since he leads me on points. But it’s not likely that I’ll lose since my last two games are Buffalo Wings and Money in the Bank respectively. The two worst teams in the league. John still has to get through Silent Assassins this week and Choppers who are both solid. Those aren’t two gimmes there. If John loses both and I win both, I will win the league. So here’s to hoping. Ghetto is going to finish strong. I actually beat Baybaz this week in a tie breaker. We both had 90 points each, but my bench outscored his 56 to 39. So I’m pretty happy about that squeaker win. How is everyone coming with their commitments you assigned early on in your letters? I had committed to begin reading and finish the Book of Mormon which I did. I think you assigned Shelby Lynn to pray nightly or something? What else did you assign? Mom and Dad to do family home evenings or something? What were your assignments and how is everyone coming? We should discuss this over the phone on Christmas too. I’d be interested to know if peeps have kept their commitments and if you are holding them accountable. Remember the section of setting a cadence of accountability in your discourse on leadership. People will play differently if you are keeping score. Let them know you are monitoring their progress and it matters that they do this for you, for them, for Heavenly Father. What new commitments are you going to give everyone with this new year upon us? You should throw down the gauntlet and start holding everyone accountable to what you commit them to. Everyone actually liked those little challenges you gave us. I think you should give it some serious though, see what feels appropriate, follow the spirit, and throw us some challenges. I got your fitness regimen. I didn’t think that was going to start till you got home. Anyway, I haven’t had BK since a couple of weeks ago. I’ll be tempted today though as I drive past it on the way to the post office. I need to keep this letter sort of short since I have to mail it and fit it all into an envelope so I’m cutting out my next segment that I had prepared as another little educational series. I think you will like it and will be able to implement some its principles in your missionary work. I’ll send that off next week in your e-mail, assuming I have e-mail access to do so. I can’t believe I’m on 4 pages already. I’m going to do a shrink to fit to get this to 3 pages so I don’t have to use extra postage. Anyway, I hope you have a great Christmas on your mission. It really is a season of giving, but not in a material sense. Give the more valuable gift of your service, your love, your spirit, and the best gift of all, the message of the atonement of Christ and his plan to get all of us back to his presence. I can’t wait to talk to you soon. I miss you like crazy and love the crap out of you and I’m so proud of what you are doing and who you are and what you are still becoming. Keep up all the good work. (had to go with the 9.5 font. sorry for being so small, got it to 2 pages though.)

Love,

Trav